Product Designer, HR Experiences

About the role

The HR Expertise pod builds Gusto's knowledge and guidance layer — the part of the product that makes a small business feel like it has an expert HR team in its corner, not just a software tool. That layer is increasingly AI-driven: AI-generated guidance, AI-drafted documents, AI workflows for human HR advisors, and the compliance knowledge graph underneath all of it. This role sits at the intersection of service design and AI product design. You'll shape how Gusto delivers HR expertise across two sides of a service: the small business owner asking for help, and the HR expert delivering it. You'll design AI-assisted experiences in a domain where mistakes have legal consequences for our customers — which is exactly why judgment, preference, and craft matter here in a way they don't in lower-stakes products.

Responsibilities

• Shape the end-to-end experience of HR Assist, HR Partner Console, Compliance Intelligence, and HR Documents — four AI-powered product surfaces that share a common knowledge layer.
• Lead service design across the two-sided product: journey maps, service blueprints, and operational handoffs between AI systems, human advisors, and small business customers.
• Make judgment calls about AI outputs — when to ship them, when to override them, when to put a human in the loop, and how to articulate why a generated direction is or isn't good enough.
• Define how trust, uncertainty, graceful failure, and human override show up across these surfaces — patterns that will inform AI experience design across the broader HRX org.
• Co-lead product direction with PM, engineering, and data partners across four teams. You'll be a co-owner of strategy, not a downstream executor of it.
• Frame ambiguous problems and align partners around a clear direction, often before the data is in.
• Conduct and direct research with customers and HR partners to validate these experiences in a high-stakes compliance domain.

Requirements

• You've shipped AI-powered experiences to production — not prototypes — and can speak concretely to how you handled uncertainty, errors, and human override.
• You have experience in service design for products that involve two sides or multiple stakeholders. You should have real experience with journey mapping and service blueprinting, including operational handoffs, not just in workshop exercises.
• You can evaluate and direct AI-generated design and content — knowing when to use it, when to override it, and how to raise the bar. In a compliance domain, "wrong" isn't just bad UX; it's legal exposure for our customers.
• You have cross-functional judgment to co-lead direction with PM, engineering, and data — and hold your position when the right answer is unpopular.
• You have comfort with ambiguity — you frame the problem, scope the work, and advance forward without waiting for perfect information.
• You have 5+ years of product design experience owning shipped work in B2B SaaS, with well-developed craft across web. (Figma and a modern design toolchain assumed.)

Qualifications

• Experience in a consequential domain — HR, compliance, fintech, legal, or healthcare — where the cost of being wrong is real.
• Helped lead a team's shift to AI-native workflows, and can speak to what changed about the work itself, not just the tools.
• Experience designing for internal operators or expert users (advisors, agents, support staff) alongside customer-facing surfaces.

Skills

• Fluency with AI in both your workflow and the product.
• Comfort with ambiguity and making decisions in the face of incomplete information.
• Strong cross-functional judgment and ability to lead without waiting for perfect information.
• Experience in service design for complex, high-stakes domains.

Benefits

At Gusto, we strive to provide rewards that empower employees to achieve their financial and personal goals. We offer competitive compensation packages with a strong emphasis on equity based compensation (ownership in Gusto).

Pay

Gusto has a cash compensation range for this role of $146,000/yr to $183,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $177,000/yr to $222,000/yr in San Francisco, Seattle & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Schedule

Employees who are based in Gusto's physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role).

Location

This role is based in Gusto's physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role).